Listed 2 sub titles with search on: Local gods for wider area of: "EGYPT Country MIDDLE EAST" .
ALEXANDRIA (Ancient city) EGYPT
Serapis or Sarapis (Sarapis; Egyptian, Asarhapi=Osiris-Apis). The Egyptian god
Osiris, in the character of god of the lower world; his corresponding incarnation
as the god of the upper world was the bull Apis. His worship was first independently
developed in the time of the Ptolemies in Alexandria, the most beautiful ornament
of which city was the magnificent temple of Serapis, the Serapeum. By the elimination
of foreign elements, the conception of the god was so widely extended as to include
the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek Pluto, the Greek god of healing, Asclepius, and
Zeus-Iupiter. This new worship (together with the cult of Isis) rapidly spread
from Egypt over the Asiatic coast, the Greek islands, and Greece itself, and found
a firm footing even in Rome and Italy, in spite of repeated interference on the
part of the State. Under the Empire, particularly in the time of Hadrian, it extended
throughout the Roman world. There was a fine temple to Serapis at Puteoli, of
which remains still exist. Serapis was especially worshipped as a god of healing,
and with his temples were connected dream-oracles that were much resorted to.
He was represented, like Pluto, with an animal by his side, having the head of
a dog, lion, or wolf, and a serpent coiled round its body. As Zeus-Serapis he
is to be seen in the colossal bust in the Vatican, with a modius, or corn-measure,
the symbol of the lower world, upon his head.
VOUVASTIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Bubastis (Boubastis), an Egyptian divinity whom the Greeks used to identify with their
own Artemis, and whose genealogy they explain accordingly. (Herod. ii. 137, 156;
Steph. Byz, s. v. Boubastos.) She was a daughter of Osiris and Isis, and sister
of torus (Apollo). Her mother, Isis, entrusted Bubastis and Horus to Buto, to
protect them from Typhon. In the town of Buto there was a temple of Bubastis and
Horus, but the principal seat of the worship of Bubastis was in the town of Bubastus
or Bubastis. Here her sanctuary was surrounded by two canals of the Nile, and
it was distinguished for its beautiful situation as well as for the style of the
building. (Herod. ii. 137, 138.) An annual festival was celebrated to the goddess
here, which was attended by immense crowds of people (Herodotus, ii. 60, estimates
their number at 700,000), and was spent in great merriment. But the particulars,
as well as the object of the solemnity, are not known, though the worship of Bubastis
continued to a very late time. (Ov. Met. ix. 687; Gratius, De Venat. 42.) The
animal sacred to Bubastis was the cat ; and according to Stephanus of Byzantium,
the name Bubastis itself signified a cat. When cats died they were carefully embalmed
and conveyed to Bubastis. (Herod. ii. 67.) The goddess herself was represented
in the form of a cat, or of a female with the head of a cat, and some specimens
of such representations, though not many, are still extant. This is explained
in the legend of Bubastis by the story, that when the gods fled from Typhon, Bubastis
(Artemis, Diana) concealed herself by assuming the appearance of a cat. (Ov. Met.
v. 329; Anton. Lib. 28.) But it seems more natural to suppose here, as in other
instances of Egyptian religion, that the worship of Bubastis was originally the
worship of the cat itself, which was subsequently refined into a mere symbol of
the goddess. The fact that the ancients identify Bubastis with Artemis or Diana
is to us a point of great difficulty, since the information which we possess respecting
the Egyptian goddess presents little or no resemblance between the two divinities.
The only point that might seem to account for the identification, is, that Bubastis,
like Artemis, was regarded as the goddess of the moon. The cat also was believed
by the ancients to stand in some relation to the moon, for Plutarch (De Is. et
Os. 63) says, that the cat was the symbol of the moon on account of her different
colours, her busy ways at night, and her giving birth to 28 young ones during
the course of her life, which is exactly the number of the phases of the moon.
(Comp. Phot. Bibl., ed. Bekker; Demeter. Phal. Peri Hermen., ed. Oxford.) It might,
therefore, seem that Bubastis, being the daughter of Osiris (the sun) and Isis
(the moon), was considered as the symbol of the new moon. But the interpretation
given by Plutarch cannot be regarded as decisive, for in another passage (De Is.
et Os. 74) he gives a different account of the symbolical meaning of the cat.
Another point in which some think that Bubastis and Artemis coincide, is the identity
of the two with Eileithyia. But although Artemis and Eileithyia may have been
the same, it does not follow that Bubastis and Eileithyia were likewise identical,
and originally they must have been different, as the mode of worship of the latter
was incompatible with the religion of the Egyptians. (Manetho, ap. Plut. De Is.
et Os. 73; Herod. ii. 45; Macrob. i. 7.) We must, therefore, be contented with
knowing the simple fact, that the Greeks identified the Egyptian Bubastis with
their own Artemis, and that in later times, when the attributes of different divinities
were exchanged in various ways, the features peculiar to Eileithyia were transferred
to Bubastis (Anthol. Graec. xi. 81) and Isis. (Ov. Amor. ii. 13.) Josephus (Ant.
Jud. xiii. 3.2) mentions Bubastis with the surname agria, or the rustic, who had
a temple near Leontopolis in the nomos of Heliopolis, which had fallen into decay
as early as the reign of Ptolemy Philometor. (Comp. Jablonsky Panth. Aeg. iii.
3; Pignorius, Exposit. Tab. Isiacae, ed. Amstelod.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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